tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8693651144690632809.post4651874355092251002..comments2013-01-11T22:04:14.129-08:00Comments on OLD-TIME ATHEISM: A response to Gerald O'CollinsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8693651144690632809.post-76774595452544623502012-10-01T23:12:25.949-07:002012-10-01T23:12:25.949-07:00A quick point- I wanted to do a resurrection sunda...A quick point- I wanted to do a resurrection sundays article on the possibility of fraud, since it appears in so many religions. A good example is with mormonism, claiming that joseph smith was a martyr even though he tried to escape his death and even killed some members of the mob in retaliation.<br /><br />The disciples could have easily made up appearances. They also could have seriously distorted them through exaggerations. How would we know?Andyman409https://www.blogger.com/profile/16360897119962486447noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8693651144690632809.post-43123212947543077852012-10-01T23:06:57.561-07:002012-10-01T23:06:57.561-07:00Nice to see you again Chris. Anyways, I wrote the ...Nice to see you again Chris. Anyways, I wrote the post yesterday night, so it had some mistakes. I just edited them out now. Anyways to respond to you:<br /><br />1) It depends on what you mean by group hallucination. No, I dont think many people can share the exact same hallucination. I have read some parapsychology papers discussing the possibility, but dicided it was groundless. I still hold, however, that many people can think they saw the same thing, so long as they have enough time to discuss it and create a &quot;consensus reality&quot;. This usually occurs with illusions though.<br /><br />2) I also don&#39;t think collective apparitions happen. How could I, being a materialist? Anyways, I scoured the web for countless hours, and couldn&#39;t find a single good case of one. The only cases I found involved one person, and were almost certainly cases of misidentification. If any actual, well supported cases of collective apparitions exist, I have yet to find them. I made an account on the JREF site, and plan to write a few threads on the topic in the future. <br /><br />I&#39;m sure the books Allison brings forth aren&#39;t reliable, either. The key point, however, is that he never claims they are. All he claims is that they are as reliable as the gospels- which is to say they aren&#39;t very reliable at all.<br /><br />3) I think the group appearances have to be examined individually before we attempt to explain them. &quot;the 500&quot; never appears in the gospels, and seems inherently implausible (who counted their heads). The appearance to &quot;all the apostles&quot; is even worse. I sent an email to allison asking what the appearance to all the apostles was. he assured me that no one knew. The only group appearance that passes scrutiny is the appearance to the 12. This one, however, has many contradictory stories based on it, all of which seem to have vested apologetic interests. Assuming that the ressurecction narratives are fictional (virtally every apologist does this), we could explain it away in many ways.<br /><br />One way is that the 12 mispercieved someone at a distance a la elvis. Another is that Jesus was a &quot;phantom hitchiker&quot;. That is, the 12 met a guy that reminded them of jesus, and later became convinced it was him in disguise. Sound odd? Well, it would certainly make sense of Marys encounter and that of the emmaus disciples. And, of course, several of them could&#39;ve simply hallucinated at the same time. Maybe only a few, and maybe under very conductive circumstances (extreme fatigue, late at night, etc). Apologists never ever answer to these types of explainationsAndyman409https://www.blogger.com/profile/16360897119962486447noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8693651144690632809.post-74948941565975374872012-10-01T21:41:28.367-07:002012-10-01T21:41:28.367-07:00(continued)
2. Misperception. According to this a...(continued)<br /><br />2. Misperception. According to this article <br /><br />http://www.assap.ac.uk/newsite/articles/Misperception.html<br /><br />&quot;There are no official statistics but it is clear that most ghost cases, when properly investigated, turn out to be caused by misperception. It is obviously something that must be eliminated first, before anything can be claimed as paranormal. It is therefore important to understand it. Misperception is misinterpreting something seen, heard, felt or otherwise sensed. It is likely, taking into account the results of many investigations, that misperception alone accounts for the most reported paranormal experiences. Hallucinations, by contrast, originate inside your brain, so they don&#39;t require any &#39;something&#39; in the real world (a sensory stimulus). Between them, misperceptions and hallucinations probably account for a great many reports of apparent paranormal phenomena.&quot; <br /><br />Now that&#39;s significant for the resurrection appearances for obvious reasons. The article goes on the claim that while hallucinations happen to individuals, misperception can happen to individuals and groups alike. If a group of people see an ambiguous object or shape, they might perceive it as something specific, like whatever they&#39;re expecting to see. This explains a lot. People who go on a haunted house tour see a shadow that appears to be moving. One shouts out &quot;it&#39;s a ghost!&quot; and suddenly everyone thinks it&#39;s a ghost. Or a group of hunters in the woods see a bear or a dark shape in the distance. If they&#39;ve heard other reports of bigfoot in the area they might perceive this as bigfoot too. Same thing happens when people turn strange bright lights into UFOs or apparitions of the Virgin Mary. You can&#39;t help but think of the disciples. They go to a mountain expecting to see Jesus. As the sun goes down they see a human-like shape at the top of the mount, where Jesus used to preach when he was alive. One disciple points to it and claims &quot;It&#39;s the Lord!&quot; They all fall to the ground in worship. When they look up, Jesus is gone. There it is: Jesus appeared to the twelve. Same thing could happen to a larger crowd. Once one person points to a distant figure and says it&#39;s Jesus, everybody &#39;sees&#39; Jesus. <br /><br />The point of all this speculation is that &quot;either resurrection or hallucination&quot; is a false dichotomy. There are several other options that aren&#39;t terribly implausible. Who could ever prove one is more probable than another?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8693651144690632809.post-59529544512210668052012-10-01T21:40:44.346-07:002012-10-01T21:40:44.346-07:00Hey Andy, nice work refuting O&#39;Collins. Please...Hey Andy, nice work refuting O&#39;Collins. Please excuse this rather long rambling comment. I agree with you that most of O&#39;Collins&#39; objections are weak. The fourth has some bite, though. He&#39;s right to point out that the literature Allison cites for group visions is from paranormal researchers and not psychologists, and some of it comes from books that are a century old or from unreliable, popular books about ghosts and such. There doesn&#39;t seem to be any scientific basis for group hallucinations. <br /><br />It that&#39;s true, it appears we&#39;re stuck with either a real resurrection or some kind of paranormal phenomenon that causes visions of the dead in multiple people at the same time. The former validates Christianity while the latter merely refutes naturalism.<br /><br />Sometimes I wonder if we&#39;re trying to explain facts that haven&#39;t been established. Even a critical scholar like Allison seems to move too quickly in assuming every appearance in 1 Cor 15 is a historical fact. If it&#39;s in Paul&#39;s creed it must have happened, however you explain it, right? I&#39;m not so sure. Consider two alternative ways to account for the group Christophanies:<br /><br />1. Evangelical propaganda- Let&#39;s say that O&#39;Collins is right to dismiss the paranormal literature on group visions as pseudo-science. What follows? Well, paranormal researchers still have recorded a bunch of claims from people who say they had a shared apparitional experience. Let&#39;s assume that these are mostly false claims, claims made to get attention or to convince others that ghosts/psychic powers are real. If that&#39;s the case, it seems we can still make an argument from analogy for the resurrection appearances: people like trot out stories of shared apparitional experiences to prove that they are real, veridical, not just tricks of the mind. Couldn&#39;t the early Christians have been doing the same thing? Say that in the beginning, there were only appearances to individuals - Peter, Mary Magdalene, whoever. These appearances - possibly in conjunction with an empty tomb and reflection on the scriptures - would have convinced the disciples that Jesus had been raised. In their initial preaching, however, they would have been met with resistance. Lone appearances to Peter and the demon-haunted Mary may not have been too convincing to skeptical outsiders. So some of the early Christians, either members or the twelve or the first converts, took to embellishment: &quot;It was not just Peter who saw Jesus, but all of us at the same time. We even touched him and even ate with him.&quot; Ask yourself, what sounds more convincing: &quot;Jesus appeared to some prostitute named Mary&quot; or &quot;Jesus appeared to 500 people at once&quot;? Eventually, some educated Greek speaking Christians turned these emerging stories into 1 Cor 15 and the gospels. Note that this theory does not deny the fact that the disciples sincerely believed in the resurrection; it was their sincere belief that motivated them to dedicate their lives to proclaiming the risen Jesus, part of which meant coming up with good stories for public preaching, sermons, and so on. Think of Catholics during the counter-reformation. Some were accused of outright faking exorcisms to prove the Holy Spirit was with them and not the Protestants. Surely they made deceptive claims to promote their religion, but who would deny that they sincerely believed that the Roman Catholic Church was the one true Church founded by Christ? Passion and sincerity can exist along side invention and even deception. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com